"The Grim Reaper is busy this winter."
-Anonymous-
Brazil had broken through to the Orinoco River Basin early on in the war, but logistical issues had halted the advance in its tracks. Venezuelan counterattacks hadn’t gained any ground but did prevent them from advancing till the summer of 1989. Even then, the severe logistical issues and the pressing needs of the Peruvian Front prevented the Brazilian Army from deploying its overwhelming numerical advantage until better supply networks were hacked out of the jungle. In October there was enough buildup for them to go on a general offensive into Venezuela – but the beleaguered Venezuelan military obtained significant reinforcement in the time that passed.
While the European Theater came first, President Rumsfeld paid keen attention to the fight in South America. The Soviet raids on the East Coast were fresh on everyone’s minds, and making sure the Caribbean stayed an Allied lake was a top priority. Since the spring and summer tens of thousands of US troops began pouring in through the ports of Cartagena and Maracaibo. Under the command of famed Vietnam veteran General Hal Moore – and joined by significant Mexican and Nicaraguan divisions – they merged with the Venezuelan Army under General Elidoro Guerrero into a combined force under Moore’s command. Spaced out wide along the Orinoco basin, they were still stunned by the sheer amount of troops Brazil had brought to bear.
Targeting big with twin objectives of Caracas and Merida, Brazilian commander Antonio Bandeira coordinated with the Raposa Army under Maj. General Leonidas Goncalves in eastern Venezuela to march on Ciudad Bolivar. While not as thick as in Europe, the air battles were substantial as the light Brazilian forces charged from the jungles and fought across the river. While their armor was light, to counter the American MBTs plenty of anti-tank missiles were supplied to their troops, and to avoid being swarmed Moore drew back plenty of times. He could afford to, with over 150 miles of space between the Orinoco and the major Venezuelan cities. Using the light units of the 10th Mountain Division and the 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions to good advantage, he kept the Brazilians from running amok. In the east, the Mexicans and Nicaraguans put up a solid fighting withdrawal to Ciudad Bolivar.
It was at Calabozo where Moore planned his stand, Guerrero and Maj. General Hugh Shelton leading their forces into a determined counterattack against Bandeira’s spearhead. Meanwhile, a smaller force under Brig. General William F. Garrison and Lt. General Jose Maria Peraza met a light Brazilian corps under Octavio Julio Lima at the village of Bruzual on the Apure River. On November 21st, under heavy rainfall, the two sides battled each other in the muck. Gas was next to pointless due to the weather, as was rapid maneuver, so each force relied on full frontal assaults to crack the nut of the defenses or attacks. Calabozo was mostly a draw, but at Bruzual Garrison used the far superior American all-terrain armor to flank Lima’s force. If he hadn’t had to cross the Apure, then the Brazilian force would have been crushed. It took five days of retreat and pursuit until Garrison finally surrounded the Brazilians at Eloriza, forcing Lima to surrender.
With the disaster in the west, and news that Mexican General Gerardo Vega held firm against Goncalves’ attacks at Ciudad Bolivar, General Bandeira decided to withdraw completely before his force was cut off on both sides. Over the next month, under cover of rain and the exhausted Allies, Brazil pulled its forces out of Venezuela and destroyed all the road and rail links through the thick jungles. Boa Vista and northeast Roraima Province would fall to the Mexican-Nicaraguan pursuers, but they could go no further – enraged, Carlos Marighella had Bandeira arrested for defeatism and demanded a resumption of the invasions. When told that it was impossible and the Allies couldn’t invade that way either, he calmed and ordered all remaining army units not needed elsewhere to the North Chilean and Peruvian fronts. If his northern flank was secure, then Brazil would fight for world socialism elsewhere. However, he didn’t imagine that the north could be threatened in a different manner…
Meanwhile, General Moore received his orders from Washington. His victorious Army was to assume command over the marines and airborne units in Ecuador and would then be transferred to Peru. South America would be liberated, by whatever the cost.
Well into its second month, the Battle of Baghdad was descending into a fair approximation of hell. Other than several spoiling attacks on Fallujah, the Iranians concentrated their forces into the urban landscape. Wave after wave of bodies were thrown into the streets under cover from strategic bombing and chemical attacks. Saddam had declared not one inch of ground was to be surrendered, and the Iraqi ground forces – supplemented with old men and young boys drafted from the civilian population – made Iran pay with blood. Fresh Saudi reinforcements and Saddam Fedayeen shock troops counterattacked whenever possible backed up with their own gas and airstrikes. General Shirazi used every tactic he could to take the city without annihilating his own force, focusing on the East Bank of the Tigris and Saddam International Airport to surround the central city. He would use artillery to saturate enemy strongpoints with nerve and pulmonary gasses, assault troops armed with modern flamethrowers advancing afterwards to capture the poisoned rubble (the tactics were soon shamelessly copied by all powers). By October nearly three fifths of the city had fallen, but then disaster struck.
Syrian offensive forces had launched attack after attack on Zarqa and Amman, trying desperately to break through the defenses. Israeli ground commander Ehud Barak remained on the defensive, forcing the Syrians to drive them out with bullet and bayonet for every inch. Flanks were well protected with crack Israeli mechanized units that bore the brunt of the assault (the drumbeat of anti-Semitic propaganda out of Damascus increased as the war progressed). Many were worried that the Warsaw Pact would break through, but on October 9th all worries turned out to be for naught. Egypt, having moved troops slowly over the last several weeks to the front, declared war on the entire Warsaw Pact. Aside from a small attack into Sudan to protect the Aswan Dam, the entire opening offensive was concentrated on the north as General Hosni Mubarak and Barak broke through Syrian lines in the Galilee and east of Zarqa. The resulting collapse in pushed the front back to the Golan and to Jasim and As Suwayda, Syria, Assad losing over 80,000 men as POWs.
What convinced Shirazi to halt offensive operations was disaster for the Syrians. Having pulled tens of thousands of troops out of Occupied Lebanon to halt the Egyptian-bolstered Alliance counterattack, the remaining garrison troops in Beruit, Tripoli, and Tyre were overwhelmed when a sudden wave of fire from naval artillery and airstrikes hit them on October 24th. Fifty thousand French soldiers and Marines under General Michel Roquejeoffre – supported by the French Mediterranean fleet and elements of the Italian Navy – hit the beaches and captured much of the Lebanese coast within a day. The Syrian garrison withdrew into the mountains to halt them, but being short on manpower they could only delay the coming disaster.
Assad ordering all Syrian forces out of Iraq to save Damascus from falling, STAVKA ordered the Iranians to cease the attack on Baghdad and send a force to Syria to help their ally. Iraqi forces launched a partial counterattack that drove the front back to the southern bank of Lake Terthar and captured thousands of Iranian rearguard troops, securing Baghdad completely for them. Moscow also dispatched a core force of 200,000 Russian and Ukrainian Motor-Rifle troops, to bolster the Iranians. Promoted to command the whole front, Shirazi planned a new offensive in the spring – this time in the south.
Forming a significant chunk of the Allied defenses were the South African Expeditionary Force and the Rhodesian First Army, a motley connection of mixed-race units that challenged the majority view of the white republics as racist hellholes (Rhodesian units were about 70% black while South African units were 30% black with a further 5% Indian component). Despite his reputation for racist views and a distrust of their nominal ally, the Entebbe Pact defenders reluctantly allowed General Magnus Malan to assume command of the entire war effort thanks to his distinguished record and pressure from the rest of the Anti-Warsaw Pact Alliance. Facing down the juggernaut, Malan wanted to attack with all he had but was disconcerted at the numerical superiority. Initially unsure of whether Nairobi or Kampala would be the target, upon the communist offensive he had shifted the bulk of his South African/Rhodesian forces prepositioned to move to either front to bolster Mustafa Adrisi’s Ugandan 2nd Army. Just as the repositioning was complete, the communists had reached the Kampala exurb of Wobulenzi.
Wishing to mollify his erstwhile allies, Malan had selected the SAEF’s commander with care. Lt. General Themba Matanzima was a former Umkhonto We Sweze guerilla that had switched sides when Nelson Mandela was pardoned. Rapidly rising through the SADF, he had distinguished himself in the invasion of Zambia and thus was entrusted with the command. Determined to prove himself and his race (many in the hardline white factions back in Pretoria balked at his appointment by Malan), he and Adrisi coordinated their defense in the flat terrain as a series of withdrawals and local counterattacks that bloodied the Ethiopians and Sudanese. Marshal Abate siphoned in more men, especially from the flanks and his reserve of allied national units, and sent them into the meatgrinder. Over the next two weeks, they slowly but surely closed in to within two miles of the Ugandan Capitol. Idi Amin, holed in his Entebbe Palace, demanded Malan counterattack at least five times a day but he was content to follow Matanzima’s strategy.
Matanzima had planned well – with the approval of Malan, the commander had left the Rhodesian forces under General Peter Walls on the eastern flank in Kenya, largely unused despite being the elite of the Allied army. While Adrisi wished for the Rhodesians to assault the weakened inner flank of Abate’s army, Matanzima planned something far grander. On December 1st, Walls smashed through the weak Cameroonian defenders at Eldoret, Kenya, quickly taking Kitale within a day and advancing hard into the Upe Plains of northern Uganda. Meanwhile, Lt. General Deogratias Nsabimana broke through light Sudanese defenders at Fort Portal and advanced rapidly as well. The communist forces were too slow to react, resulting in the two armies meeting at Kigumba on the 3rd. Desperate to escape, Abate and Sudanese commander Omar al-Bashir threw themselves at the Rhodesians and Ugandans. The Allies blasted them with firepower until blood ran red, but before they could take any casualties themselves they would withdraw and allow the main spearheads to withdraw. Orders from Matanzima were to preserve their forces after the furious losses in the south, and by the time the vice closed for good, only 75,000 troops were left in the pocket south of Lake Kyoga. President Tafari Benti would order the Ethiopian forces to hold at all costs, and as December ended they still stubbornly refused to surrender.
In the gap between Operation Konstantin and the new offensive the Soviets were planning, over three dozen divisions were moved to Germany from STAVKA’s strategic reserve or from garrison duty along the Far Eastern or Central Asian borders. Significant partisan activity from the fanatical
Werwölfe guerillas hampered Warsaw Pact movement – and East Germany was in a constant state of unrest due to pan-German sentiment within them – but Marshal Gromov left such problems to KGB occupation troops. As the commander of the Western Theater, his concern was with breaking through the Rhine River defenses and hopefully capturing Antwerp before winter set in (essentially the same as the WWII Battle of the Bulge on the German side). Four million Soviet troops readied themselves, joined by over 800,000 Polish, East German, Slovakian, and Hungarian troops. Facing them were equally built up Allied forces, a melting pot of soldiers in the German Rhineland: 2,500,000 Germans, 800,000 Americans, 200,000 French, 200,000 Belgians, 150,000 British, 100,000 Canadians, and 70,000 Dutch (the vast majority of French, along with significant German and American forces, were in central Wurttemberg). General Powell had overall command of all Allied forces, while the division of power left German
Generalfeldmarshal Gert Bastian facing off against his Soviet enemies once more (bearing a scar on his arm from a Red Army bullet) as commander of Army Group Rhine.
With the largest concentration of troops since WWII, the Soviet plan relied on three objectives: first, the tying down of Allied troops in the core Rhineland cities of Essen, Dusseldorf, Duisburg, and Wuppertal; second, the capture of Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, and Heidelberg; and third, smashing across the Rhine in the center and driving on Belgium and Luxembourg. On October 10, over 80,000 artillery pieces opened up along the narrow front with a mix of conventional and gas rounds (counting the Allied counterbattery fire, official figures found that the Battle of the Rhine would employ the largest volume of poison gas in the history of warfare), Marshal Gromov commenced Operation Kutuzov. Above, the Soviets gained slight air superiority over the slice of the frontlines as the skies were filled with dueling planes – including the F-15 fighter of Kaiser Georg, completing his military service for his Empire and obtaining 13 total kills during the battle. The north Rhineland was swarmed with Soviet troops under General Dangatar Kopekov, assaulting the Belgo-Dutch-German-British lines and taking murderous casualties – many units forced at bayonet point by KGB and GRU military police to advance through Essen and Wuppertal - while the Allies were stretched so thin that many German units were forced to use stockpiles from the 50s or even WWII. This force was largely comprised of Central Asian, Tatarstan, and South Caucasus conscripts, the vast majority Muslim, and considered expendable by Kryuchkov, Demichev, and Akhromeyev. Marshal Gromov would reportedly vomit upon getting the orders to send them to their deaths, but he carried out his orders.
With significant Allied forced tied down in the north Rhineland due to the minority division sacrifice (over 800,000 casualties sustained by them alone), General Sagadat Nurmagambetov assaulted Frankfurt and Darmstadt directly with his Russian, Kazakh, Polish, East German, Hungarian, and Slovakian units. Opposing them were German units under
Generaloberst Ulrich de Maiziere and the French armored contingent led by Jacques Massu. Mostly devoid of civilians, Frankfurt would become a chemically poisoned version of WWII Berlin as determined French and fanatical German resistance faced off against Warsaw Pact forces fueled with a sense of pure revenge on their hated enemy. Even as Heidelberg and Wiesbaden fell, Frankfurt stubbornly held on. Marshal Gromov and General Sergey Solokov would use this opportunity to assault across the Rhine in mid-November, using the bulk of their elite 5th Motor-Rifle Army, 1st Guards Army, and 2nd Shock Army along the narrow Bonn-Koblenz-Wiesbaden front. Facing against the American 3rd Army under General Norman Schwarzkopf, Cologne was surrounded and pounded into submission on November 11th, the Imperial German capitol of Bonn on the 12th, Aachen on the 20th, Bitburg on the 24th, and finally Maastricht on the 27th.
All of free Europe and North America were in a panic, General Powell preparing to shift his HQ to Paris in case Brussels became the frontline – if Antwerp fell, then only God could save the Allied cause. Divine intervention came early in November however. General Schwarzkopf’s 3rd Army met Lt. General Valentin Bobryshev’s 1st Guards Army at Luxembourg City, and German
Generaloberst Ernst Kruse’s (a decorated WWII panzergrenadier veteran) 6th Army of Stalingrad fame met General Anatoli Tchernitsov’s 2nd Shock Army at Hasselt. In the two day engagements in which 250,000 total casualties were shed, the Allies were victorious. Church bells across Belgium rang in celebration, the GIs and Panzergrenadiers hailed as heroes, General Kruse being awarded his second
Ritterkreuz by his Kaiser. The Soviets were forced to withdraw to avoid being encircled. 2nd Shock managed to hold a bulge of territory west of the Rhine along the Neuss-Grevenbroich-Kerpen-Bonn line. However, Schwarzkopf wouldn’t let 1st Guards escape so easily.
Determined to hold their bridgehead on the west bank of the Rhine, Bobryshev halted his retreat and turned around to await General Schwarzkopf’s attack in the fields and scattered woodlands west of Koblenz. Both sides poured reinforcements into the standing off forces, the Soviets boosting their strength to nearly 300,000 troops and 1,700 armored vehicles while Kruse reinforced the Americans to combine to 310,000 troops and 1,300 armored vehicles. On December 5th, a Soviet armored battalion engaged the lead elements of the American 1st Armored Division, beginning the largest tank battle in history. For three days the snowy ground of the formally sleepy Rhineland city was stained red-black with blood and smoke. Gas and high explosive wreathed the area in fire and poison, thousands of tanks dueling with each other. Borrowing a Soviet tactic from the Battle of Prokhorovka, Kruse had his Leopard tanks charge under cover from artillery and the American M1 Haig tank fire (owing to their better fire control systems) to close with the Soviets and engage them at point blank range. A-10 Warthog and SU-25 Frogfoot ground-attack fighters would earn their keep alongside heavily armed helicopter gunships, earning a fourth of all tank kills in the battle. Bobryshev attempted to outflank the Allies, only for an American battallion led by recently promoted Major H.R. McMaster to fend a numerical superior force off for nearly 30 minutes until divisional reserves were thrown in. The Battle of Koblenz would end on December 8th, both sides exhausted and fought out with 512 Allied tanks and 651 Soviet tanks destroyed/damaged in total – the Soviets had held their main bridgehead while the Allies had ended the Soviet central offensive.
All in all, by mid-December the furious fighting that had characterized autumn was finally starting to taper off. Winter snows – forecasts were predicting it to be an unseasonably cold one – hampered even the Soviets, and their forces were bloodied and forced to rely on lengthy supply lines. While the US was just as far away, factories in the UK helped and transport by water could be in greater bulk than via rail from Chelyabinsk, Ulyanovsk, and Magnitogorsk. Nevertheless, Gromov had been massing more Central Asian, internal Russian ASR, and lower Caucasus divisions to throw into the fray for a mid-winter offensive, simply needing additional crack troops to get his main force to before-Rhine levels. The hope among STAVKA and the Politburo was to crush NATO before it could be further reinforced.
But then, chaotic calls for help from the Far Eastern Military District put all plans in the West on indefinite hold.
Since the victory of the
Minseito Party in 1972, Prime Minister Yukio Mishima had been hard at work reshaping Japan. The economy was booming, traditional cultural norms retained with needed modernizing reforms, and national confidence restored to pre-WWII levels. He found immense success in political reform, convincing the Emperor Showa to reclaim his godhead. Hirohito largely distrusted him though, and the real efforts wouldn’t begin until his death and the coronation of his second son Masahito as Emperor. An ally of Mishima since his rise in the early 1970s, Masahito used his clout with the people to support the 1984 recreation of the House of Peers as the second legislative house in Japan. On a 1988 party line vote in the Diet and unanimous vote in the House of Peers, Mishima restructured the State of Japan back into the Empire of Japan – normally it would have dominated headlines across the world, but the world was busy with the tensions between the great power blocs and it went largely ignored.
However, his greatest effort was in the realm of building up the Japanese Military. After the repeal of the pacifist elements in the Constitution, Mishima and Defense Ministers Minoru Genda and Shintaro Abe – the latter succeeding the former after Genda died in 1985 – passed the Military Expansion Acts of 1982 and 1986 through the Diet and HoP. The entire pacifist officer corps was sacked, replaced by promising young commanders and skilled members of the HoP, including a dashing noble named Kazuo Yamanashi. By the time World War III began the Imperial Japanese Army, Navy, and Air Force were at the same strength as prior to the Japanese takeover of Manchuria half a century before, the industrial conglomerates churning out high quality weapons and equipment. As the Soviet juggernaut advanced through Europe, Mishima felt it was time to initiate the next step in his effort to revitalize Japan. While progress had been made, it had been his deep belief that unless he could alleviate Japan’s long-term problems with a stagnant national will and overcrowding in the cities then all progress would reverse. Still, he held out for the longest time, until a breakthrough was achieved. American SecState John Danforth (having been appointed to the position after Dick Cheney suffered a heart attack and resigned in October 1989) and Special Envoy to East Asia Ronald Reagan finalized negotiations with Mishima and Foreign Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone guaranteeing Japanese territorial gain after an Allied victory.
Buoyed by CIA, MI6, BOSS, and Mossad reports that the Soviets weren’t expecting Japan to actually act, Mishima went to Emperor Masahito at the Imperial Palace to request consent to declare war. The Emperor, fearful of what happened to the Empire under his father – Emperor Showa – was initially hesitant and cautious, but after a long discussion was convinced to follow the Prime Minister’s point of view. Given the Imperial consent, Mishima authorized Operation
Kitsune to begin, tasking Prince Yamanashi to lead the combined forces to long-awaited glory. In the evening hours of December 19th, 1989, he addressed a closed session of the Diet. The odd candidate for the leader of a resurgent empire called on his countrymen to join him in the restoration of Japan’s glory:
“To prove to the peoples of the world that Japan will never set. That Japan will never descend into the permanent darkness of a broken nation. No matter how long the night lasts, the sun will always rise! And the Rising Sun will do its part to save the world from tyranny, and bring everlasting glory and honor to our land, our people, our ancestors. Tennōheika Banzai!”
All but the far-left of the Socialist Party and the far-pacifists joined Mishima in a chant not seen since WWII, the vote almost unanimous. Japan was going to war.
The IJN sailing to battle from Hokkaido.
Upon the declaration of war, the IJAF swarmed over Sakhalin Island – nearly 200 fighters and strike fighters overwhelmed the 40 largely obsolete Soviet aircraft (F-15Js and Mitsubishi F-2s facing off against MiG-21s and Su-15s) and pummeled the defenses there. At dawn of December 20th, 50,000 soldiers of the 2nd Field Army under General Tokikichi Arima landed at Aniva and Korsakov on the southern tip of the island. Facing off against 10,000 KGB troops and Soviet Air Force ground units, the two pincers quickly converged on Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Moving with the speed and pluck characteristic of Japanese Armies in the past, the city was taken in just an additional day of sparse fighting, 500 Japanese casualties to 2,000 Soviet. Additionally, a second landing was made with 20,000 at Poronaysk and 10,000 Naval Special Landing Forces were tasked with taking the Kuril Islands. All targets would fall by the end of December, the final Soviet garrison at Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinskiy surrendering on December 29th. In triumph, Prime Minister Mishima would personally visit the former Soviet city, renamed Toyohara as it was during the Japanese control of the island, renamed Karafuto. Arima, a garrison force moving in to take over, prepared his unit for transfer.
While Karafuto was close enough to Japan to assault almost immediately, the Imperial General Staff still needed to deal with the Soviet Pacific Fleet. A shadow of its former self as half their surface assets and all their aviation ships were transferred west, the Soviets still possessed quite a punch with one
Kirov-class battlecruiser and seven guided missile cruisers. Thus, the IJN under Admiral Binichi Murukami set sail with the massive transport fleet on December 15th from the new naval base at Hakodate, Hokkaido with the pride and joy of the Japanese Naval expansion: the fleet carriers
Akagi and
Yamamoto, and the fleet guided missile battlecruisers
Yamato and
Kirishima. Exultant sailors cheered the raising of the famous Z-Flag used at the great naval victory at Tsushima, Japan advancing once more to its place in the sun. They sailed largely out of sight until December 21st, in which a Soviet
Uladoy-class destroyer managed to send out a warning before being sunk by a F-4 naval strike fighter off
Yamamoto. Ordered by STAVKA to wipe out as much of the Japanese transport fleet as possible due to the serious lack of troop strength in the Far East, Soviet Admiral Gennadiy Khvatov sailed out from Vladivostok to engage the Japanese – thinking it better to fight rather than get bottled up in port and get wiped out. With ground-based fighters of the IJAF suppressing as many Soviet Air Force aircraft as possible, the two fleets met one hundred miles off the Outer Manchurian coast. The high-quality Japanese sailors and naval airmen overwhelmed the undertrained, c-list ground forces that the Soviets kept in the Pacific Fleet. Surface-hugging cruise missiles blasted past the Soviet air defenses, sinking much of the fleet and scattering the remaining ships – whatever wasn’t sunk fled for Petropavlovsk. Aside from submarines, most of whom were harassing US shipping in the east Pacific, the Battle of the Sea of Japan cleared the way for the invasion fleet.
Japanese mechanized forces advancing through the snows to the Ussuri River.
Three days following the Battle of the Sea of Japan found Japanese forces launching their first military operation on mainland Asia since 1945. The Japanese doctrine called for a far more mobile, independent force structure than most western militaries. Four Field Armies comprised the initial mainland assault in Operation
Kitsune, the total of 240,000 soldiers divided more or less evenly among them. Compact and trained in a combined arms, fully integrated fire support, and “Thunder Running” – a term borrowed from the Americans – the plan before them was risky but Prince Yamanashi was confident that it would end in victory. The invasion came with four main landings. The 3rd Field Army under Count Mogataru Takahashi, the largest of all four at 75,000 troops, landed east of the port of Nakhodka and quickly moved to capture the city for resupply purposes for the invasion. West of Vladivostok near the North Korean border, the smallest force of 40,000 troops of the 5th Field Army under Lt. General Raizo Ishii landed – they captured all the land up to Primorsky before encountering major resistance. And lastly were the landings of the 1st and 4th Field Armies (125,000 troops) at Preobrazheniye and Veselyy Yar respectively. Commanded directly by Yamanashi, their objective was the most important. As the others were tasked with holding the main Soviet forces in place, the 1st and 4th would cut across Outer Manchuria and sever the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Efforts in Germany, Italy, the Atlantic, Iran, and Iberia taking priority, the Far Eastern Military District had been stripped bare for the most part. Having been up to 1.1 million at the height of the Sino-Soviet Border Crisis, in December 1989 it was a hollow husk of its former self at only 110,000 troops and largely obsolete equipment commanded by Col. General Lev Rokhiln. Against the might of the rejuvenated Japanese Empire – who, unlike in WWII, were armed with the latest and greatest in weaponry – they resorted to the defensive for the most part. However, piss poor intelligence believed that the two northern IJA landings were mere feints with only half as many troops than were there in reality. By the time that the beleaguered Soviets realized the threat to the north, Yamanashi was already through the mountains. A small holding force commanded by Brig. General Aleksandr Kotenkov at Arsenyev were overwhelmed by the Japanese on January 17th, while Lake Khanka was reached on the 28th, severing the Trans-Siberian Railway and cutting off Vladivostok.
The remainder of February for the Japanese was spent trying to clear out as much Soviet territory as possible. All of the past six weeks had been spent frantically building belt after belt of defenses, and with the two flanking Japanese pincers – the eastern one out of Nakhodka reinforced by General Arima’s 2nd Field Army – closing in, General Rokhlin ordered a scorched earth policy put into place and what few tank units he had left to delay the Japanese advance long enough for the remaining forces to withdraw into the Vladivostok defenses. 37,000 Soviets would clash with the 4th Field Army at Ussuriysk on Feb 9th, the tank battle raging for 36 hours before a division from the 1st Field Army arrived and scythed through the Soviets. The battle would go down as one of Prince Yamanashi’s finest victories, but over the long term it gave Rokhlin the chance to withdraw 40,000 men into the Vladivostok peninsula, anchored in the main defense line cutting through the suburb of Artem – securing the city and both the civilian airport and the military airbase on Russky Island. The Siege would begin in earnest, Japanese artillery starting its steady pounding the city on February 23rd, 1990.
In Tokyo, the enthusiasm was palpable. Elderly veterans of the past war – both as soldiers and civilians – were as hopeful as ever that their nation would rise once more. Youth, with no knowledge of any Japan but this one, flocked to the streets and to the recruiting offices to show their support for their nation and Emperor. The IJN ferried tens of thousands of troops to Nakhodka and the Mulberry ports along the coastline of Primorsky Krai. IJNA and IJAF battled with newly arrived Soviet Air Force units on loan from strategic air defense. Prince Yamanashi and Prince Abe knew that the fight would not be as much of a cakewalk as before, tensions with China increasing as their longtime enemy shared a land border with them for the first time since the Second Sino-Japanese War. STAVKA reassigned General Anatoly Kvashnin from Germany to command the entire Far Eastern Front, hundreds of thousands of reinforcements pouring into Irkutsk, Blagoveshchensk, and Khabarovsk as efforts shifted from Vladivostok to the next stage – the drive to the north.
PARIS HIT
-Buckley News Network-
December 31st, 1989
Reports are live from the City of Lights, the sky is filled with a different kind of light as Soviet bombers have launched a nighttime raid upon the French Capitol. Casualties are high and damage is extensive, explosions all around us. BNN military analysts report that the attacks are consistent with cluster munitions being used. We will stand by with further... [scuffles, dust obscuring the camera as loud explosion fills the screen].
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“BURN THEM ALL! THEN LET SATAN BURN THEM AGAIN!”
-John G. Schmitz-
A blizzard had blanketed Moscow when General Secretary Kryuchkov called a meeting of the full Politburo on December 24th, 1989. The situation wasn’t at a nadir, but no one was happy with the reversals of the Fall and Japan’s entrance in the war. A sizable faction led by former General Secretary Vladimir Semichastny appealed for a negotiated peace, feeling that they could make major gains while crippling much of NATO’s might. Including the initial anti-war faction, many candidate members of the Politburo were siding with Semichastny. With the American sleeping dragon fully awakened, fear of a grinding war of attrition and the rumblings of discontent starting to sprout up concerned them. All in the Politburo had seen Alvaro Cunhal’s body swinging from the noose in Portugal – many subconsciously stroked their necks in fear.
But the committee members that controlled the voting membership of the Politburo believed victory was in their grasp. The reversals were minor, and had left the Allies with significant damage. A new set of offensives in the New Year would win the war – all the Warsaw Pact had to do was to break the spirit of the Allied nations. Use their abhorrence of wars of attrition against them, their casualty aversion to force them to the negotiating table on the USSR’s terms. Pyotr Demichev and Grigory Romanov had reserved the massive Soviet strategic bomber force for exactly such a campaign – with the massive arms reductions, the need for bombers in nuclear deterrence was not vital. The Politburo agreed with the hardliners, and the Second Blitz was born.
The Second Blitz began at 10 PM on December 31, 1989. After staging a false flag assault over the Netherlands with crack fighter squadrons – even winning a victory by shooting down 21 NATO aircraft to losing 15 of theirs – 100 Tu-95 Bear, Tu-22 Blinder, and Il-28 Beagle bombers entered France through neutral Swiss airspace. Escorted by long-range MiG fighters, their target were the industrial north and populated center of Paris. France was caught off guard by the attack, and the city was largely undefended due to this and the scarcity of SAM launchers (western doctrine called for smaller, tactical SAMs close to the front and a reliance on airpower for strategic defense). Long unused air raid sirens blared as the subdued yet festive New Years Eve celebrations devolved into chaos. The Soviet bombers unleashed their destructive payload of incendiary napalm and cluster bombs upon the civilian heart of the city. The destruction was massive, the old-style nature of the buildings providing less protection than more modernly built ones would – despite taking a near hit, the Eiffel Tower would just barely survive sheer collapse, and the Arc de Triomphe would get a large chunk blown out of it. After the bombers departed, a second wave of 15 Tu-160 long range bombers arrived with a payload of Sarin nerve gas bombs, adding to the chaos in the wee morning hours of New Years Day. In total, the Soviets lost 11 bombers to a total of over 100,000 Parisian dead and a further 200,000 wounded.
A world stunned and devastated by the sheer callousness and depravity of the Soviet assault, an enraged France would hurl every strategic aircraft it had into a Jan 5 revenge attack. Unable to muster the numbers to smash through the Soviet air defenses, they targeted the Yugoslavian city of Belgrade instead, hitting it with napalm and gas. Forty thousand civilians would die in the French retaliatory strike. On Jan 11, the Soviets would launch a second strike on the French city of Lyon, adding another 35,000 dead.
Soviet Bombers flying over the North Sea during a mid-February raid on Glasgow.
And so began the progression of the Second Blitz. Cities all around the world were hit – starting with Barcelona on January 17th. One city would be hit on an average of one or two a week, long range bombers hitting cities far from the front lines while strike fighters such as the MiG-27 and Su-24 striking cities such as Amsterdam, Brussels, Milan, and Arhus close to the front, as well as one on Tokyo. The tactics were simple, cluster and incendiary munitions (sometimes high explosive) initially while the rear bombers dropped poison gas at the tail end of the chaos to maximize casualties. As the west began shifting interceptors and SAMs to the front, the Soviets began using Scud ballistic missiles taken out of nuclear use. Naples was hit with the first wave of VX bomblet scuds, killing 33,000 after evading the SAM nets. As a result, President Rumsfeld would authorize the prototypes of the Patriot anti-Missile missile rushed into production and shipped to Europe. Losses among the Soviet bomber crews were horrendous, but most were among the hoarded elderly models and the untouched Ural factories kept churning more and more out. In a daring raid on May 1st, 200 Tupolev Backfire, Badger, and Blackjack long range bombers took off from bases at Anadyr as a diversionary raid was launched on Japan. While Anchorage had been hit in March, the rest of North America was untouched. This would change as the bombers slammed into the West Coast, hitting Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. American fighters took out 70 Soviet bombers but the damage was done, the gas, napalm, and cluster bombs killing 250,000 and injuring over twice as many.
The most destructive raid would be the June 5th raid on London. Using a route from the Kola Peninsula through Iceland and the North Atlantic to avoid as many radar detection stations/aircraft as possible, the 125 Bear, Bison, and Badger bombers smashed through the deficient Irish air defenses and gunned for London while fighters drew RAF interceptors with a feint at Dover. Each bomber was armed with the Soviet triple threat, though shortages of Napalm led he main incendiary fuel to be white phosphorous instead, but several of the Bisons were armed with special “Bunker Buster” bombs with the goal of smashing through to the London Underground emergency air raid shelters. The tactic would cause massive casualties – a total of 60,000 dead – but two bunker busters from the bomber of pilot Yevgeny Vetrov would have an outsized impact. The first would smash through the road directly behind 10 Downing Street, while the second impacted in the same general location, entering the protected bunker of the Prime Minister’s residence. By the time firefighters cleared the debris, Colin Mitchell was found among the dead.
Flags were at half mast in every Allied nation, while there was silence out of the Soviet Union. Aside from several zealous leaders such as the Brazilian and Iranian communist governments, the usual exultant media releases from STAVKA weren’t forthcoming due to the death of Prime Minister Mitchell. In Westminster, the national government met to elect a new leader for the wartime crisis. Many were considered: Margaret Thatcher, Michael Heseltine, Edward Heath, and even Roy Jenkins as a compromise, but only one contender emerged as the wartime consensus. Someone who would send a signal to the abysmal morale of the British people in the wake of the death of the popular Mitchell that victory would still be theirs. Defence Secretary and grandson and namesake of the last wartime Prime Minister: Winston Spencer Churchill. Ascending to the podium to cheering members of the House of Commons, Churchill the Younger delivered his own famous lines to contrast with Churchill the Elder.
“Britons will never stop fighting. We will never cut and run. And by the grace of God, upon the end of this war the Iron Curtain will be nothing but a pile of molten slag as the communist empire burns under the white-hot flames of freedom and justice! Victory will be ours!”
Paranoid at heart, much of the obsolete aircraft in the Soviet arsenal had never truly been gotten rid of. Old jet bombers, propeller-driven aircraft designed after World War II, and retired strike aircraft were dusted off, already supplied to the far-flung fronts and tossed into the fray once the Blitz expanded to the Third World in February. Cities far less sturdily built, Bogota, Lima, Jiddah, Abu Dhabi, Dar es Salaam, Abidjan, and Benguela were saturated in firestorms by March. But the biggest “war crime” would occur in Asia.
Enraged at South Korea for resupplying Japanese forces in Outer Manchuria and for allowing the United States to use bases on its territory, General Secretary Kryuchkov himself ordered the Ides of March Raid. Coordinated with strikes on Oslo, Manchester, Algiers, Nairobi, Cairo, and Santiago, 115 bombers used Chinese airspace to assault Seoul. Completely undefended and not even expecting the attack, the densely populated city was completely devastated. Intense growth prior to the war’s end had left many buildings sloppily built, many homes and urban dwellings still made out of traditional Asian materials. The resulting firestorms rivaled the firebombing of Tokyo in destructive power, VX and Tabun bombs scything through the innocent. 270,000 South Koreans would die, the highest number in any single airstrike in human history. As a result, the Asian Tigers of Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Commonwealth of Malaya, and the Philippines would join South Korea in declaring war on the Warsaw Pact, joining Japan on the Far Eastern front.
Since the war’s beginning, any disagreements between factions within the Iron Curtain had been forgotten as patriotic sentiment caused them to unite in winning the war. However, with the sheer brutality and indifference to human life shown in the Second Blitz, with nearly nine million dead and counting, over 25 million rendered homeless, many of the divisions began to secretly resurface. Now, the questions whispered in hushed tones revolved around not if the Soviet Union could win the war, but whether it should.
In the west, the Second Blitz turned what was already significant anti-Soviet sentiment into outright hatred. Bombings in the past were considered a painful necessity with smashing enemy industry, but the Soviet attacks – especially given the use of chemical weapons – were seen as deliberately targeting innocent civilians. Calls beginning with the enraged rants of John G. Schmitz engineered into full on calls for the USSR to be turned into an irradiated wasteland, especially after the American West Coast was hit in the first real wartime devastation of the North American mainland since the Civil War. Calls to nuke the Warsaw Pact were resisted by President Rumsfeld, and he managed to restrain himself from ordering an attack on the USSR itself. Joining with the only other main strategic air power, the UK, air commanders knew that the sheer belts of Soviet SAM defenses would only prove ruinous to any retaliatory strike. While the higher echelons at the Pentagon and the White House knew that technology would eliminate this problem, a different strategy was developed initially.
The USSR was impregnable at this point. Its allies weren’t.
USAF B-52 heavy bomber unleashing payloads of bombs that it would have taken whole flights of planes to unleash in WWII.
On March 21st – in retaliation for the Ides of March Raid – 350 B-52s and B-60s of the 12th Air Force, along with 50 RAF Avro Vulcans and new Hawker Sidley Highlanders took off for South America. The targets were Recife, Brasilia, Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires. Chemical weapons were banned on use against civilians by orders by President Rumsfeld (an order duplicated by Prime Ministers Mitchell and Churchill), the bombers were loaded with high explosive, cluster munitions, and incendiaries. To suppress the SAM systems, Wild Weasel escorts out of Guyana and French Guyana were combined with an innovative idea by 12th Air Force commander Chuck Horner to use AC-130 gunships in a direct SAM suppressor role. The idea worked like a charm, and the bombers unleashed their payload of death on the unsuspecting South American cities. 500,000 people would die in the American retaliation, the slums of each city suffering Dresden-like destruction.
With all restraint given up by the Soviets, the Allies gave up restraint as well. The immense numbers of the USAF and RAF were joined by the other Allied air forces in raining death upon the cities of the Warsaw Pact. Lagos, Nigeria would take the cake with 200,000 single deaths from RAF immolation, while South African and Ugandan assaults on Addis Ababa would utilize mass use of VX gas to kill 140,000. In South America, all restraint was eliminated as Brazil/Argentina dueled with Chile over how many cities each could flatten, burn, and poison, Tupolev Badgers taking on Avro Vulcans as nearly every major city with a population of over 100,000 became the victim of at least one air strike. Though many would cheer, President Rumsfeld would sum it up: “It seems that to survive, humanity has lost its soul.”
But as the running joke among NATO military leaders put it, “One Soviet general ran into another Soviet general on the grounds of the Eiffel Tower and said, ‘By the way, who won the air war?’” Both STAVKA and Brussels knew the war would have to be won on the ground and the seas. Powell and his fellow commanders planned an initial strategy of focusing on the far flung fronts first – to knock out the Soviet allies first and then concentrate overwhelming force against the Soviets. Meanwhile, Demichev and STAVKA planned the exact opposite. They would strike everywhere with massive numbers, overwhelming NATO and securing victory. But with discontent brewing on the Home Front, time to press the advantage was dangerously short.
With the air war heating up, Mikhail Gorbachev had been working around the clock to convince China to enter the war on their side. He had given up on India as hopeless, given Indira Gandhi’s worsening physical condition and Sanjay Gandhi’s anti-Soviet attitudes, but felt that convincing Jiang Qing would be a much smaller hill to climb. Things had been impossible for much of the war. Qing and her allies in the politburo were dead set on not antagonizing the United States. They had carved out a sphere of influence in Asia and knew that regardless of who won they would be in a prime position to expand that influence. This calculus changed when Japan entered the war.
The People’s Republic had been petrified of the tide of rearmament by the Minseito government since Mishima was first voted into office, and was one of the only nations to react intensely to the recreation of the Empire of Japan. Anti-Japanese riots had filled the streets, and many within the PLA wanted to declare war on Japan to take advantage of World War III. Qing had rebuffed this, but the realities of Mishima’s positions left China no doubt that if the Allies won then Japan would annex Outer Manchuria. China couldn’t allow this, and negotiations began to enter the war as some sort of co-belligerent against Japan only (Kryuchkov was fine with this, knowing he could essentially outsource the Far Eastern front to China), but that idea was wiped out when the Asian Tigers entered the war after the Bombing of Seoul and America’s deployment of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force to Outer Manchuria. They may have had gotten away with it before, but not now. Formal declaration of war would bring NATO’s wrath, something Qing needed to avoid at all costs.
PLA unit marching during a May Day celebration. The hope in Beijing was that a border conflict would cause the Allies to halt Japan or risk bringing China into the war.
However, young Col. General Chi Haotian – commander of the Shenyang Military Region – brought forth an idea. Essentially a resurrection of the Korean War strategy, if China could send a smaller but substantial force as “volunteers” then they could bank on NATO’s desire not to fight a war with China itself and hinder Japan. Qing liked the proposal, and the Politburo voted on April 14th, 1990 to endorse it. 350,000 soldiers under now-Marshal Chi Haotian were allocated as the People’s Volunteer Army to fight in the Soviet Far East.
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Elizabeth and Philip Jennings were loading out the car. Elizabeth handed Philip a map "Our target is a train station, the Center wants us to deal with it, to stop American troop movment" Philip was a bit anxious,it showed enough so that Elizabeth noticed. Looking over she spoke right to him "Don't say your getting itchy feet Philip." Phil looked right back at her "yes I am getting itchy feet,everything is tightening up, You saw Rumsfeld on TV, "We will catch these traitorous vermin who lay in our backyards." who in hell do you think he is talking about? Us that's who. Besides, look at the kids, we both know they are American as you can be, hell you know who they listen to? John Freaking Schmitzl."
Elizabeth really hated that fact, looking around, to make sure they were out of earshot. In fact The children were out at the freedom house concert, Designed to help with the American War effort. Of course the kids had no Idea what they were doing, and that was just as well, they did not want the Paige or little Henry to know about their real jobs."I know that Philip but I can work on them, they could grow up to be Socialists,Student activists."Philip scoffed "this place doesn't turn out Socialists, Elizabeth,you know that ,I know that". Elizabeth finally just stopped"I don't want to argue about this now,let's just get the mission done." They were just about to go when the phone rang.
Annoyed Philip walked over. "Philip Jennings,what can I do for you." A reply came almost immediately and with that their life was changed forever.
"Hello Philip or should I say Mikhail, I am FBI director of Counterintelligence Frank Gaad, We have been looking for you folks for quite a long time, yes I know what you people are. You're the feared Directore S officers, implanted into this country in 1976 I believe." Looking to Elizabeth with his face ashened he whispered "were blown". The FBI man continued "you now have two options either come in, right now and volunteer your services to us in the FBI or get arrested, executed and never see your children again.Your choice,I have your house under surveillance so You better not leave and try to go underground. Good day to you."
(some time later)
Philip and Elizabeth were driving for two hours now, to a trail in the catskills. The FBI man had given very specific instructions over the phone. They were to meet here, in the ass end of no where to make sure nobody noticed this little jaunt. They finally stopped at the parking lot and just sat there in an awkward silence. It was Philip who broke that silence."I know you do not want to do this Elizabeth but we.." Elizabeth snapped back at him "You think I don't want this, what a genius you are. Yes,I do not want to betray the motherland don't you?" Philip looked back "No, I do not want to do this but you know what I want less. Dying on an electric chair with my children thinking of me as a traitor. I assume you don't want that
Elizabeth stared right at him with a piercing gaze. Philip looked right back not blinking.Finally Elizabeth broke out off eye contact. "No, you don't." Philip got out of the car finally "then let's get up hiking, shall we." As they walked up the trail with their brief case they saw two posters, the first one showed a image of the Shining city of America being sneaky approached by a vaguely ghost like red blob, the caption below read "Defend the shining city on a Hill from the Red Menace, sign up at the nearest recruiting station." The other one had an American soldier standing over a dead bear with the words "once they get a taste of our steel they will fall to defeat." Elizabeth snorted "Why in god's name would you place a propaganda poster out here of all places, it's not like anyone is going to read it."
A voice they both knew came out of the woods behind them, "You can thank the Boy Scouts of America for that,they were putting up posters on their latest camping trip,you know patriotism of course." It was Frank Gaad the man who was out to pull them around like puppets. With that two other men came out of the forest just behind them out of eye sight. "Could you please get into my line of sight, I don't like big threatening men who are just standing right behind me. Gaad nodded with a big smile "Now, now Gentlemen we wouldn't want to make our new agents nervous now would we?" Phillip could detect a slight bristling from Elizabeth as the agents grudgingly got into eyesight.
Gaad noticed and smiled some more "Get used to it, Mrs.Jennings, If you don't want to end up sitting in old sparky at the federal detention center this how it's will be. Now let's get moving" As they moved up Elizabeth leaned in and whispered "we could kill him now,we would have time to get out of here before they notice he is dead and after that we could make it to an extraction point along the coast." Philip silently scoffed "that won't work and you know it, they would organize a manhunt across the area.Besides what are we going to say to the kids "Yeah we're all Russians now" they would turn us into the FBI within a couple hours and we would ruin our relationship with them forever." Elizabeth silently looked down,"I guess you're right" The FBI man turned around "please kiddies speak up for the Class, you wouldn't be doing anything such as oh i don't know planning to kill me."
Philip stared straight back at him with a stoney look in his face"No,we know what type of power you folks have on us". "That's good, I would hate to leave two orphans,I really would." They treated the rest of the way in silence. Finally they reached the cabin. Inside were a bunch of FBI agents and a recorder. Gaad got to the table and motioned for them to sit.
"I know you have been wondering how you were identified, well no harm in telling now since the soviets already know. The KGB command officer from South Korea, who served as your commandant at the academy,Nikolaevich Timoshev,defected about a week ago. He knows who will win this war, so he decided to get in our good graces, He spilled your names and faces. What he did not know was your informants or any other operatives. That is one of the reasons we need you. Name all of those who gave information to you on a regular basis, starting with those who knew what you were and we will see what more use we can pry out of you." Elizabeth spoke up, "First we need two things from you, One: Our Children will never know what we do and Did. Two: After this war is over we will receive financial compensation for resettlement."
Gaad looked right at her "you are not in a position to make demands you know that right?"Phillip came back with "I beg to the contrary. We are strong enough resist enhanced methods for a long time and doing that will mean they know that the center will know that we have been compromised that is something we both do not want." Gaad looked around and finally said "you are right of course, you will get your guarantees as long as you cooperate, if you don't, we'll take you both into custody,execute you and tell your kids every little detail of your work, especially all the affairs you were having,is that clear" Philip gave the affirmative"Perfectly". Gaad nodded "good let's get started then."
Written by @President Earl Warren
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The new year found South America in a flurry of moves and countermoves – the US, UK, and France beginning to commit themselves (along with Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, and other Central American Allies) in full, the Communists moved to rely on the wall that was the Amazonian Rainforest while focusing their entire numerical might on Peru and Chile. Their cities were getting bombed out daily despite giving it back to their continental enemies as good as they got, and the latest Anglo-French offensive out of Cayenne had captured Ampa State and the city of Macapa on the mouth of the Amazon, but Brasilia and Buenos Aires knew that the war would be won in the Andes and such was where the focus was being made.
Due to the dense jungles and scarcity of roads in the Amazon basin, essentially no conventional fighting occurred on the length of the border between Brazil and Colombia/Peru. No large scale force could keep themselves supplied in this region, so the fighting more resembled mass raiding parties of Brazilian irregulars, Chilean special forces, Focoist partisans, and one particular group that carved out its own special identity.
From their formation during the turbulent insurgency in Peru, the neo-Incan Defenders of Inti had grown in size and reputation ever since. Led by the enigmatic and near legendary commander Pachacuti, they found their recruitment, supply, and support base among the poor natives and mestizos of Peru, marginalized and exploited for bodies and labor by the Criolles-dominated government (although they received significant aid from the Chilean intelligence service). Operating inside Brazil since the war started, Pachacuti and his capable commanders Guanca Auqui and Tupac Amaru III launched an extensive guerilla campaign that brought death and destruction to all of Brazil’s western frontier. Whole towns were depopulated or wiped out, resource convoys and supply lines to the Cusco front attacked constantly. However, Pachacuti wanted to engage in something… grander. One that would put the Defenders of Inti on the map. Gathering his total 8,000 troopers (50 times larger than what he started with), the Incans marched for Brazilian city and supply hub of Manaus.
Neo-Incan forces training in the Andean jungles.
Emerging from the jungle on all sides in a lightning strike at night, it took only two hours for the Incans to capture the city from what Brazilian military (mainly air force) and police forces that were present. Massive weapons confiscations under both the previous military junta and the current communist governments left the 600,000 civilian residents of the city defenseless. A terror gripped the city, the reputation of Pachacuti’s guerillas well known all across the Amazonian frontier. To their credit, the Incans were on their best behavior, only displaying their ruthlessness against those that attacked them and members of Brazil’s secret police
Not seriously expecting their jungle fortress being attacked, let along captured, Brazil wasn’t equipped to deal with the eventuality when it arrived. Essentially committing their entire force to either border garrisons, fighting the Anglo-French offensive in the northeast, or to the main fronts in Peru, Atacama, or Mendoza, Brasilia couldn’t spare much to recapture Manaus. However, barely anything was considered enough against what amounted to bandits. A scratch force of militia, green troops, communist street gangs, and largely obsolete equipment that included T-34/85 tanks bought from the USSR – including five old Su-7 ground attack aircraft for air support. Commanded by Major General Zenildo de Lucena, the force set out on riverboats from Santarem up the Amazon till landing at Itacoatiara to advance by land. Everyone was confident that Manaus would be recaptured quickly.
Knowing Brazil was coming, Pachacuti and his commanders weren’t idle. In the weeks since the capture of the city, they essentially turned it into a fortress. Civilians rounded up and either expelled from the city or held in designated areas marked from the air, the various buildings were piled with sandbags and poured cement, strongpoints placed everywhere. Homemade explosives and Chilean-supplied C4 and Semtex were combined with scrap metal and nails into what military experts would call Scratch Area Bombs (or SABs for short). Amaru would have them placed all over the city and along any main roads leading into Manaus to slow down the Brazilian forces. As the sun set on the second to last day of February, a terminally ill old man – a coolie for the guerillas – volunteered and was offered as a sacrifice to the gods, Pachacuti himself performing the ceremony. Civilians watching it in horror, the leader pleaded to Inti that this offering give victory to his people over the communist enemy. And on March 1st, 1990, the enemy arrived.
General de Lucena had devised a multiprong offensive strategy to catch the guerillas off guard, given that he had more men to deploy. His main armored forces, backed up by militia and communist guards, would attack south on the main highway and through the crop fields to the west on March 1st. Then, a large portion of his regular forces would land from barges on the Amazon north bank east of the city on March 2nd. The main assault immediately took a disastrous turn when SABs wiped out a fourth of their armor before even making it into the city, immediately taking murderous losses at clearing out the strongpoints. The Su-7s proved to be the saving grace as the Incan defenders apparently had no anti-air capabilities, and modest gains were made. Hope that the landings the next day would turn the tide were high, but they were essentially a disaster. Green conscripts, the troops botched the landings and the northern bank essentially became a huge snarl of soldiers milling about in disarray. Seizing the advantage, Incan Major Manco Ruminawi took five hundred warriors and attacked the 3,000 Brazilians. For only 75 casualties, Ruminawi killed 600 and took the rest prisoner.
On the 3rd, Pachacuti unveiled his two secret weapons. When the Su-7s made their pass at noon, he brought out several captured SA-7 SAM batteries hidden away and ended up bringing every one down. Then, at 1:47 PM, a reserve force of 1,200 that had been waiting in the jungles to the west slammed into the Brazilian flank. In the ensuing chaos, 15,000 Brazilian troops would be captured while the rest fled. In a victory that would become legend, the Defenders of Inti had held Brazil’s Amazon fortress.
Exultant, lining up prisoners into American and Chilean transport aircraft at Manaus Airport to take to POW camps, Pachacuti had no intention of staying. Scrounging everything he could find, along with over 2,000 new volunteers from the Amazonian native population, he blew up anything of military value and escaped back into the jungle. He would become a household name in Peru, celebrated among the disadvantaged native and mestizo communities.
Despite at long last capturing Antofagasta due to the influx of Brazilian divisions, the inability for the Warsaw Pact to break through the Chilean defenses (leading to their halt at Taltal), focused all attention to the north. Equipped with the best soviet armor and heavy weapons, the Argentines and Brazilian reinforcements reactivated the Peruvian front with a drive on Cusco, supported by Bolivian and Uruguayan levies and Shining Path partisans. Opposing them were Peruvian forces under President and Field Marshal Francisco Morales-Bermudez and the Chilean Expeditionary Force under General Jorge Lucar – reinforcing them were the Allied army under Hal Moore, comprising of American, Mexican, Colombian, Nicaraguan, and Panamanian troops. Historians would call the coming campaign the Second Battle of the Nations (the first being the Napoleonic Battle of Leipzig).
Argentine mountain troops celebrating the capture of Antofagasta.
Both Argentine President Mario Roberto Santucho and Brazilian General Secretary Carlos Marighella wanted Cusco captured – the most important city in eastern Peru, taking it would open up an assault on Lima and knocking Peru out of the war. Then they could concentrate on wearing down Chile while the Amazon wall kept them safe from ground attack. Bathing enemy positions in artillery fire, rockets, and gas, the hundreds of thousands of troops pushed back the Allied defenders into Cusco itself. The battle would turn into bloody urban combat with the Peruvian defenders. Rural regions to the north and south didn’t escape the fight either, elite Brazilian forces battling Mexican and Nicaraguan divisions to the death in order to surround the city. No side would budge, causing bloody trench warfare all through mid-April.
Conditions among the Bolivian Army were at a nadir. They were brave and decently equipped, but supply problems led to many being hungry and the Bolivian government was of a hardline form of communism that rooted out any negative feelings as treason. In the 58th Brigade, an infantry formation centered on the village of Pachaconas, the arrest of a popular Captain caused the battalion commanders to execute their Colonel and lead their men in a mutiny. While problematic, this was a disaster in the making. Opposing them were the crack American 1st Cavalry Division and the Chileans, the Allies’ best forces.
It wasn’t apparent to either side at first that an entire Bolivian brigade had mutinied, but once Moore and Lucar weren’t about to refrain from exploiting it once the magnitude of the breach had been discovered. The 1st Cavalry Division and Chilean 12th Light Mechanized Division threw themselves at the Warsaw Pact defenders along with the mutinied Bolivians, widening the gap and allowing for over 100,000 troops to break into the enemy rear – Stalingrad all over again. Crespo and Goncalves, realizing that at any moment the Allies could turn and cut them off, put plans in motion to retreat but were undercut by Santucho and Marighella as they ordered them to hold firm and counterattack. The counterattack went in but were defeated by Chilean flank guards, Moore ordering his American units and the Chilean mobile forces to drive deeper and deeper into the Warsaw Pact rear. Then, at Espinar, their force divided. Lucar and the Chileans continued east to Juliaca, while Moore and the Americans wheeled north to complete the trap. In ten days, Crespo took the heat and ordered the withdrawal of all forces he could, and a little under 300,000 under Goncalves managed to escape before the trap fell shut.
Crespo fought hard even while surrounded, but the scarcity of supplies only got worse and slowly but surely the pocket was beaten back and back. Finally, on May 15th, he surrendered his forces, over 200,000 going into captivity. This was only the most glaring of problems for the Warsaw Pact. The Allied counterattack had caused a general collapse, panicked units racing east as fast as they could and being savaged by constant airstrikes. By the time the front stabilized in Mid-June, only a chunk of southern Peru centered at Tacna was still in Argentine hands. To the north, Lake Titicaca had been completely captured and Chilean-American forces were on the outskirts of La Paz itself, taking the fight into Bolivia.
To add insult to injury, after months of fighting and offensives on both sides that bogged down into trench warfare, a wide flanking maneuver by a Chilean mountain division caused a massive breach in the Argentine/Brazilian lines at Mendoza. Trying desperately to plug the gap, they were vulnerable to the renewed attack by the Chilean Home Army commander Humberto Sinclair. Their lines broke, capturing Mendoza and forcing the communists to retreat east of the Desaguadero River. To the south in Patagonia, the poor quality of the Argentine defenders allowed General Humberto Gordon to smash through the defensive lines at Puerto Santa Cruz in the fall offensive. Scything across the rocky ground, Chile managed to reach a line cutting across Patagonia from Puerto Deseado on the Atlantic to the eastern bank of Lake Gral Carrera before the first of the southern winter storms hit. Such would nearly cut off the Argentine garrison of the Falklands, isolating the newest province of the nation to potential attack.
The new year had started with immense hope for the South American members of the Warsaw Pact. Overwhelming superiority in numbers gave them certainty in victory, but with the disaster at Cusco and the other fronts, everything seemed to collapse at once. Efforts by Pachacuti essentially caused the Defenders of Inti and other Allied irregular groups to own Acre and the western half of the Amazonas state. Cities a bombed out, poisoned mess, tension faired among the already severely repressed population. A group of disgruntled army officers attempted a coup on June 1st in Brasilia but failed to overthrow General Secretary Marighella. In retaliation, he would order a nationwide purge that resulted in over 20,000 deaths and 50,000 imprisonments. Such would cause more restrictive monitoring of potential dissidents in the other Warsaw Pact nations in South America, all on a knife’s edge. Hope was now with the allies, knowing that one more campaign season could end the war in the Southern Continent.